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Illinois TE transfer Cole Rusk | Arizona Athletics
It seems like every offseason Arizona’s coaches spend time talking up how involved the tight ends will be in the offense, only to see fairly pedestrian production from that position. The exception was when Tanner McLachlan went from an unknown FCS transfer coming off a knee injury to an NFL draft pick in 2022-23.
Otherwise, it’s been a lot of like the 2025 season, when tight ends combined for 38 catches, 335 yards and four touchdowns. The year before it was 36-453-3. Good numbers, but not anything that jumps off the page like they do at Baylor, Iowa State, Utah or pretty much every other school in the conference.
It didn’t help that one of the Wildcats’ top TE options, Tyler Powell, suffered a season-ending knee injury on the first offensive snap of the opener against Hawaii. At 6-foot-7 and 249 pounds, Powell was the ideal size for what the UA wants at that position and what it pursued heavily in the transfer portal.
“Playing in the Big 12 we needed to get longer,” tight ends coach Josh Miller said. “Collectively as a room, we weren’t as long as I felt like we needed.
Arizona addressed that need by signing three tight ends, all of whom are at least 6-4 and weigh 240 pounds. Cole Rusk was the first offensive transfer commitment, coming in from Illinois, followed by Shane King (Southern Miss) and Arthur Ban (San Diego State).
Miller said Rusk—whom he picked up from the airport the same night Arizona returned home from playing in the Holiday Bowl—was the priority because of how they see him fit into the scheme.
“He showed that he had the athletic ability to do what we wanted in the throw game,” Miller said of Rusk, who has 55 receptions and five TDs in his career. “And although … he wasn’t asked to do some of the things that we’re asking to do in the run game, I felt like he can do it.”
Rusk, who also played at Eastern Michigan and Murray State, is the son of an ex-MMA trainer. When the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Rusk transitioned from basketball to football as a teen, his father emphasized the importance of using his size and strength to his advantage.
“He didn’t really care about blocking fundamentals or anything like that, just trying to whoop somebody,” Rusk said.
Though he had many offers, Rusk picked Arizona partly on the word of his quarterback at Illinois, Luke Altmeyer, who had worked with UA offensive coordinator Seth Doege at Ole Miss.
“I’d heard from friends, friends of friends at Illinois, who said this was a good place,” he said.
Arizona has seven tight ends on the spring roster including true freshman Henry Gabalis and redshirt freshman Kellan Ford, both of whom were at or near the top of their respective recruiting classes. They’ve found a mentor in Powell, who is not participating in full practice as his recovery continues but is expected to be fully cleared for summer workouts.
“I feel like it’s been a really good opportunity to just kind of focus on the the mental side of the game,” Powell said. “As an older guy in the group, I kind of feel like accountable to the younger guys and helping them out. And just if they have questions on the offense, just being a guy that they can confidently go to and be like, yeah, TP is going to know what I have on this play. Because I can’t do anything physically on the field, I feel like it’s helped me mentally just prepare myself.”
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